Down and dirty with Dell, Windows & Mac
02 Aug 07 Filed in:Computers
A disclaimer: I don't hate Dell; Windows is obviously a joy for many people; and Mac is just what I like and know. Having said that, I don't know how the PC crowd sleep at night, or maybe you don't, and you all suffer from the Stockholm Syndrome - you say everything is fine, just so that Bill Gates and Michael Dell cronies don't come and kill you?
In my limited experience, Dell and Microsoft have some really great ideas and implement them well. (Replacing a hard drive in an Inspiron laptop is so easy it is ridiculous, and Windows has the greatest selection of Solitaire I have ever seen.) On the other hand, these bellwethers, (or is it irresponsible behemoths?) have a knack of making the sublimely easy turn into the sublimely ridiculous.
Imagine this. You have a new hard drive with a copy of Windows installed and it is working perfectly, but there is still a maze of installations to go before you can get onto the internet or listen to music, or have a display that doesn't ripple when you drag a window across the screen. This complete novice to the Dell way of doing things was scratching his ass for 3 hours fighting with 2 CDs full of drivers.
If you are a PC user and know nothing about Macs, you probably think that it is reasonable to fart around with drivers before your computer can function properly at a basic level. And maybe it would be reasonable to expect novices to do some heavy lifting, in order to get a feel for the tool they are going to be using day-in, day-out. But the average user surely deserves some easy-to-use software and support? Dell don't help much.
To their credit, there are two CDs full of essential drivers and utilities. You are expected to install the contents on your hard drive. No biggy -Except you cannot copy the content of both disks onto your fricking hard drive at the same time. No, you have to delete one before you can load the other. How retarded (and confusing) is that?
And once you can actually see a list of drivers on one of the CDs, you are confronted with this arcane methodology that demands that you interpret a series of ticks and divine what things do from the most pathetic descriptions ever written. For instance, when you load a video driver, you are not quite sure whether it applies to your machine or not, because, let's face it, who has the necessary paperwork from 4 years ago to double-check the exact spec of your computer, and who has 4 years to find the info on Dell's website? And even if you strike gold and it is the right driver - you then find it is an out of date version. And to take the piss totally, you can only update the driver once you have installed yet another driver to get onto the internet. Give me strength.
The laptop was originally set up by Dell and worked great till the hard drive died. Copying the exact set-up of the original hard drive, I made 2 partitions, a small 31MB partition alongside the main partition where I installed Windows. I have no idea why Dell did that, but who am I to argue. Surprise surprise, it had repercussions for me and Windows kept producing a bubble that insists on telling you what you already know, ie the small partition has less than 200MB of free space, do something about it.
Long story short, and after much investigation, you can't just turn off that bubble. The simplest option is to delve into the registry and add a file with a new DWORD. No worries say the geeks, Crap yourself says everyone else, because you risk ruining your whole system in search of peace and quiet.
I suggest that this inability to keep things simple is because the people in charge are all nerds who have no handle on the technical abilities (and interest) of the majority of their user base. Normal people need normal instructions. What dick head thought that to turn off a PC you should press Start? Why do you need to tell me I have a wireless connection when I am already on the internet surfing without a cable? Why do I need to uninstall one CD to load the complementary contents of another one?
I vowed as a younger man never to get into computers. This was based on the trials and tribulations of working on a 386 PC with some godawful version of Windows. I decided I would go hungry and live my life as a technophobic wastrel, rather than waste my life losing hours of work to inexplicable crashes and never being able to print without re-mapping a network.
One day in France I stumbled upon a display of Macs and saw the light. They looked fun and people insisted they were easy. To be honest, it is hard to take that statement seriously from a Frenchman, because if there is a hard way to do something, they will find it. (Hydraulic suspension, caterpillar buses, trains that go 300mph... all that technology comes with a steep learning curve for anyone involved in their production and maintenance!) But they were right and if you install your Mac equivalent of the Windows CD or DVD, once it is loaded with almost no input from you, you can restart it, listen to music, watch videos, and surf the internet (assuming you have internet!).
The way technology is, you always need to update drivers and software, but at least on a Mac, you have what seems to be a logical path to follow and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to find what you need on Apple's website.
Many would say I am biased and Macs are just as complex as PCs. Maybe, but I think what it is, if you come from Windows to Mac, yes, it has a steep learning curve, but I never really got contaminated by the Windows way of thinking.Coming to a Mac with untainted eyes, I reaped the benefits of a Mac's relative simplicity.
Hardened Windows users have it ingrained in their head that it is OK to have silly little desktop icons with arrows coming off them, to prove they are aliases. And worse, it is acceptable that these useful icons are hidden from view for most of the time. When I turned on the Mac, I never blinked an eye or thought, How illogical that the desktop was empty apart from some application icons in this big old dock thing at the bottom of the screen. And it was always on view. And how easy to drag my most used applications from the "Explorer" straight into the Dock, - look, no arrows included on these aliases.
I never did enough work on Windows to realise that an application dumps files all over the hard drive, so to me, it was logical, natural and nice that on a Mac you drag an application icon straight into the trash. Apart from some totally benign preference files, which you can safely leave in place, an app in the trash is dead and buried, and you don't have to worry about any bubble-based messages haunting you forever thereafter.
Alert alert, you trashed an application, shared resources, reg.dll.neverhaerdofitfile may not work now, or
Do you know that was very naughty trashing that app, because the clever Windows people spent a long time writing that program and you just threw it away. There is nothing better than Internet Explorer, traitor.
And I certainly never experienced a full install of Windows on a Dell before, so imagine the shock of all this ridiculous song-and-dance to get a computer working.
On balance, it would be easy to repeat the installation and whizz through the steps to get the Dell working again, (I am a hardened Windows head now, having altered a file in the registry, woohoo) but really, if I ever have to rely on that set up to blog, I can assure you, the Pisstakers will cease to exist.
Addendum. In response to an ungracious criticism from a Digger, I slightly re-ordered the original post to make sure my nit-picking, as he called it, is in a more logical sequence.
The good side of Dell and Windows
In my limited experience, Dell and Microsoft have some really great ideas and implement them well. (Replacing a hard drive in an Inspiron laptop is so easy it is ridiculous, and Windows has the greatest selection of Solitaire I have ever seen.) On the other hand, these bellwethers, (or is it irresponsible behemoths?) have a knack of making the sublimely easy turn into the sublimely ridiculous.
Dell driver hell
Imagine this. You have a new hard drive with a copy of Windows installed and it is working perfectly, but there is still a maze of installations to go before you can get onto the internet or listen to music, or have a display that doesn't ripple when you drag a window across the screen. This complete novice to the Dell way of doing things was scratching his ass for 3 hours fighting with 2 CDs full of drivers.
If you are a PC user and know nothing about Macs, you probably think that it is reasonable to fart around with drivers before your computer can function properly at a basic level. And maybe it would be reasonable to expect novices to do some heavy lifting, in order to get a feel for the tool they are going to be using day-in, day-out. But the average user surely deserves some easy-to-use software and support? Dell don't help much.
To their credit, there are two CDs full of essential drivers and utilities. You are expected to install the contents on your hard drive. No biggy -Except you cannot copy the content of both disks onto your fricking hard drive at the same time. No, you have to delete one before you can load the other. How retarded (and confusing) is that?
And once you can actually see a list of drivers on one of the CDs, you are confronted with this arcane methodology that demands that you interpret a series of ticks and divine what things do from the most pathetic descriptions ever written. For instance, when you load a video driver, you are not quite sure whether it applies to your machine or not, because, let's face it, who has the necessary paperwork from 4 years ago to double-check the exact spec of your computer, and who has 4 years to find the info on Dell's website? And even if you strike gold and it is the right driver - you then find it is an out of date version. And to take the piss totally, you can only update the driver once you have installed yet another driver to get onto the internet. Give me strength.
Windows registry hell
The laptop was originally set up by Dell and worked great till the hard drive died. Copying the exact set-up of the original hard drive, I made 2 partitions, a small 31MB partition alongside the main partition where I installed Windows. I have no idea why Dell did that, but who am I to argue. Surprise surprise, it had repercussions for me and Windows kept producing a bubble that insists on telling you what you already know, ie the small partition has less than 200MB of free space, do something about it.
Long story short, and after much investigation, you can't just turn off that bubble. The simplest option is to delve into the registry and add a file with a new DWORD. No worries say the geeks, Crap yourself says everyone else, because you risk ruining your whole system in search of peace and quiet.
Why is the Dell and MS mindset so arcane?
I suggest that this inability to keep things simple is because the people in charge are all nerds who have no handle on the technical abilities (and interest) of the majority of their user base. Normal people need normal instructions. What dick head thought that to turn off a PC you should press Start? Why do you need to tell me I have a wireless connection when I am already on the internet surfing without a cable? Why do I need to uninstall one CD to load the complementary contents of another one?
Ed's trip to Mac land
I vowed as a younger man never to get into computers. This was based on the trials and tribulations of working on a 386 PC with some godawful version of Windows. I decided I would go hungry and live my life as a technophobic wastrel, rather than waste my life losing hours of work to inexplicable crashes and never being able to print without re-mapping a network.
One day in France I stumbled upon a display of Macs and saw the light. They looked fun and people insisted they were easy. To be honest, it is hard to take that statement seriously from a Frenchman, because if there is a hard way to do something, they will find it. (Hydraulic suspension, caterpillar buses, trains that go 300mph... all that technology comes with a steep learning curve for anyone involved in their production and maintenance!) But they were right and if you install your Mac equivalent of the Windows CD or DVD, once it is loaded with almost no input from you, you can restart it, listen to music, watch videos, and surf the internet (assuming you have internet!).
The way technology is, you always need to update drivers and software, but at least on a Mac, you have what seems to be a logical path to follow and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to find what you need on Apple's website.
Is Mac really simpler than PC?
Many would say I am biased and Macs are just as complex as PCs. Maybe, but I think what it is, if you come from Windows to Mac, yes, it has a steep learning curve, but I never really got contaminated by the Windows way of thinking.Coming to a Mac with untainted eyes, I reaped the benefits of a Mac's relative simplicity.
Hardened Windows users have it ingrained in their head that it is OK to have silly little desktop icons with arrows coming off them, to prove they are aliases. And worse, it is acceptable that these useful icons are hidden from view for most of the time. When I turned on the Mac, I never blinked an eye or thought, How illogical that the desktop was empty apart from some application icons in this big old dock thing at the bottom of the screen. And it was always on view. And how easy to drag my most used applications from the "Explorer" straight into the Dock, - look, no arrows included on these aliases.
I never did enough work on Windows to realise that an application dumps files all over the hard drive, so to me, it was logical, natural and nice that on a Mac you drag an application icon straight into the trash. Apart from some totally benign preference files, which you can safely leave in place, an app in the trash is dead and buried, and you don't have to worry about any bubble-based messages haunting you forever thereafter.
Alert alert, you trashed an application, shared resources, reg.dll.neverhaerdofitfile may not work now, or
Do you know that was very naughty trashing that app, because the clever Windows people spent a long time writing that program and you just threw it away. There is nothing better than Internet Explorer, traitor.
And I certainly never experienced a full install of Windows on a Dell before, so imagine the shock of all this ridiculous song-and-dance to get a computer working.
On balance, it would be easy to repeat the installation and whizz through the steps to get the Dell working again, (I am a hardened Windows head now, having altered a file in the registry, woohoo) but really, if I ever have to rely on that set up to blog, I can assure you, the Pisstakers will cease to exist.
Addendum. In response to an ungracious criticism from a Digger, I slightly re-ordered the original post to make sure my nit-picking, as he called it, is in a more logical sequence.
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